


Cardiology

by ArchaeopteryxDreams



Series: Dragon stories [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Dragons, Gen, Genetic Disorders & Abnormalities, Genetic Engineering, Hope vs. Despair, Magic, Metafiction, Mild Blood, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Zombie Apocalypse, brief life-saving medical procedure, creating life in a lab is hard, fantasy tropes played straight, male character looking up to a female character, passages from a fictional book, sci-fi inspired by fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:28:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25532122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArchaeopteryxDreams/pseuds/ArchaeopteryxDreams
Summary: Theodore, a junior genetic engineer, was trapped in the lab when the outbreak happened and the world fell. There was nothing left to do but to attempt his wildest dream. So Theodore began, clumsily, trying to make fire-breathing guardians like the ones in his favourite fantasy novels.
Series: Dragon stories [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1805434
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	Cardiology

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published as part of an ebook short story collection in 2014, under another pen name.

Theodore was nearly through with the alpha phase of development. He still reflexively wanted to write a lab report about it. Three hundred and twelve days into the unnamed project, after discarding half a dozen lab coats too soiled to be saved, he was still unwittingly writing introductory paragraphs in his head. Still finding clinical prose drifting like asteroids in his mind.

If he actually wrote those theses down, he would have been at a loss for how to conclude them. He was using gene manipulation in an attempt to make the world a better place. Outlining that wish on hard-ruled lab reports would be like killing joy itself for the autopsy table.

But even if he couldn’t articulate his motivations, biotechnology was a tool Theodore was grateful to have. Putting in extra hours of lab work throughout his career had been the best decision he ever made. Even all these never-ending hours of the past year. There was no other use for his time, really.

Pulling a hand through his greasy hair, Theodore tried to stop fidgeting. He was at the end of three hundred and twelve days of mistakes — good ones, bad ones, messes he couldn’t begin to classify. He should have found some bravery by now.

He sat at his lab table one last time. The last test Specimen was out of the incubator, a live thing struggling inside its eggshell. The brittle sounds came too slowly, too far apart. Without enough strength to make anything but hairline cracks in the glossy shell. And then the silence held.

Theodore tried to hold his bunched fists in his lap — maintain objectivity, observe without interference — but his Specimen was dying and by everything right, he wouldn’t allow that again. With a U-100 syringe near and ready, he took the basketball-sized egg in shaking fingertips. And he pried.

The shell gave way with a crunch and the Specimen spilled out in a tangle of wet limbs — sticky with mucus, its eyes wide, scrabbling with sickle claws like it might grab hold of air to breathe. Theodore put a finger between its jaws — the needle teeth a burning sensation far beyond his hammering pulse — and he slid the syringe down the Specimen’s throat, and pulled the plunger. Yellow mucus filled the tube. Then the scrabbling quickened and the teeth sank in whiter, and Theodore pulled the syringe out just as the specimen gargled its distress.

It was suddenly over. Crisis averted. The chimeric hatchling sat calm before him, breathing evenly if hoarsely. Its green scales were drying in the recycled air. Theodore had another dragon.

With his adrenaline burning away, he smiled. And laughed. And wiped his forehead on his grimy coat sleeve and laughed some more, and felt like he might faint onto the table.

“I'm sorry,” he told it. “That didn't feel so good, did it?” He still couldn't determine whether the Specimens understood English speech immediately after hatching. They recognized language: that much was clear. Specimen 12 eyed him with flicking slit pupils, inclining its neck the way Theodore now grasped the meaning of. His Twelve was alive and, more than that, it was _thinking_. After so many successes, this still didn't feel old. After so many failures, this was always a miracle.

“You're Twelve,” Theodore told it. “That's your name, I mean. And I’m Theodore. And I just need to examine you, to make sure you're alright.”

He picked up a pencil and marked down the time of hatching. Liquid sliding over his bitten hand reminded him he was bleeding, and he wiped that on his coat, too. Then he put exploratory hands on Twelve: she quietly allowed it.

  
This hadn't been the clean unveiling of a perfectly honed mythical creature. This wasn't a glorious dragon from some fantasy realm, however slavishly Theodore had tried. He laid down his pencil — on top of the notes on Twelve's laboured breathing; lopsided skeletal structure; internal rotation of the left hind ankle; crocodilian scutes malformed and grown together in asymmetrical patches.

He pushed all those technicalities out of his mind. Twelve had clear eyes and a well-formed fluid duct in the roof of her mouth. And she was breathing. No one would be euthanized today. Maybe all of them had a chance, Theodore kept hoping.

“You scared me, Twelve,” he said, wiping his bleeding hand again. “I thought we'd have to leave without you. I mean, if you didn't hatch, or if something happened.”

She placed weight on her clubbed hind foot — and stopped, and craned her neck to stare at the appendage. Like wondering what was wrong with it.

Guilt stuffed tighter into Theodore's chest. He shouldn't have prioritized the mouth duct morphology over such basic functions as walking, but it wasn't as though he had much choice. He wished again for time. And higher-grade food. And fellow researchers, and more extensive DNA banks, and more _time_. Maybe in a hard-won future, his dragons could even have wings like they deserved to.

His enormous wish to succeed was beginning to strangle. Deep breaths, he thought. Stay calm. The Specimens didn't understand all of his words but they knew fear when they saw it.

Removing his glasses, mashing at his eyes, Theodore mumbled, “You'll have wings, Twelve. N-not you, exactly, but your— Your descendants, maybe. They'll make the Lady proud.”

By the time he let out a rush of breath and calmed down, Twelve was pawing at his shirt, an excited motion while she stared a plea. Theodore blinked at her.

“Do you know who that is? Lady Almendra?”

Twelve croaked delighted, and her pawing intensified. One claw snagged in the worn cotton. Theodore unhooked that claw and picked Twelve up, gathering her thin limbs into a scaled ball. She was still warm from the incubator yet she pushed, seeking, toward Theodore's mammalian heat.

“Good.” He put on his Respectable Member of the Scientific Community Voice. “Specimen Twelve retains memory of prenatal sound stimulus. This seems typical for the species. Well, uh, remembering the Lady is typical for humans, too. She's— She's memorable.”

On habit-trained legs, he headed for the Specimens' room.

“We shall know no fear,” he quoted for Twelve to hear again. “We shall bow to none.”

  
His own intent dyed those words now. Theodore would never again feel the same as that summer he read the first _Dawning of Shadowkeep_ book, curled up on an armchair in the baking daylight. He had stopped merely reading those words: now he going to try following the Shadowkeep principles. Really go out and try. Theodore couldn't tell whether he was eager or terrified.

* * *

Come fair weather, come ribbons of sunlight streaming into her study and setting ablaze the dancing dust in the air, Lady Almendra continued her work. She was an ivory statue at her desk, the rich velvet of her gown a blue cascade down her back and onto the floor. Before her, the fifteen Scrolls of Eternity overlaid one another, their unfurled edges forming a geometry that made their inked letters glow. Lady Almendra changed the Scrolls' arrangement often, noting which letters glowed most vigorous, marking down notes with parchment and ink-dipped quill. The silvery magic lit her fair face — which had long since cast into a pensive frown.

The servant Fadere came to her on care-laid steps, his shabby boots making no noise against the stone. He bore a tray laden with bread, liver paste and pears cut in bone-white wedges.

“My Lady? Please, take this meal. I fear you shall fall ill.”

“Fall ill of frustration? I might well.” She sighed and laid her quill down, her slender hand rising to smooth the vexation from her brow.

“Will you know the spell by the time the stars align, my Lady?”

“I shall. I must. Leave the tray here, Fadere. Gods bless your kind heart. And bring me a flask of elder wine. I shall solve this trial by the dawn — for my kingdom, may it never fall.”

* * *

  
When Theodore returned to the Specimens' room, he kicked the door three times. Claws skittered in the room beyond. One of the Specimens grumbled a warning — that was Six, probably shoving the hatchling Twelve out of the door's path.

After a prudent pause, Theodore pushed the handle with his elbow. The box of supplies made a wide blind spot but he smiled anyway, at the glimpse of the Specimens hurrying toward him, squawking greetings and demands.

He had 1.47 kilograms of primate chow for them. That was all the food remaining in this building — all the shelf-stable food still fit for consumption, anyway. Animal kibble always looked plentiful in a bucket, but then Theodore divided it into trays and saw it for the scant kilo-and-a-half it really was. Except for one handful of greasy, brown pellets — which he was hungry enough to covet — he gave his own portion to Twelve.

“This is all we have left,” Theodore told them. “Once we go outside, I’ll try to find ... I don't know. Stored food, or maybe some escaped livestock. You’ll love it. Real meat.”

The six Specimens gobbled their meal, faces down in their trays. Standing there on four feet and eating kibble, they looked a little like the dogs Theodore distantly remembered in friends' homes. The Specimens resembled dogs in their broadest morphology only, of course. Theodore wondered if lizards would make a more accurate comparison, but he had never actually seen a lizard kept in an ordinary home, eating from a bowl and walking on carpet fibre.

Lizards looked unified, covered in a smooth set of identical scales. The Specimens had no such aesthetic quality, with their manifested patches of crocodile scutes, and curly attempts at feathers growing along their spines, and the jutting, horn-like growths in unpredicted places. And the malformed jaw that forced Six to chew on one side only. And Nine's slurping as he salivated excessively. And Twelve standing there with her club foot held delicately off the ground.

Crouching on dingy lab linoleum, beside the piles of blue surgical scrubs that passed for dragon beds, Theodore tried again to tell himself again that this was an experiment. He was only accomplishing what he could. These results were an incredible scientific achievement: he felt sure of that only forty-nine percent of the time.

Six finished gulping down her half-chewed meal, and came to him with a clicking of claws. She laid her head in Theodore's lap; his fingers automatically found her neck and stroked the pebbly-textured skin.

As the trays all emptied, and the last kibble pieces disappeared into mouths, the other Specimens clustered around Theodore. Simply sat with him and offered their various-sized heads for petting. It was a display of empathy for their human caretaker, as well as a borrowing of his metabolically valuable body heat. Twelve climbed into Theodore's lap, between the others Specimens' noses. This was the only sheltered day she would get, and she would probably never know what monotony was.

“We should go,” Theodore said to them. “Since you've just eaten. Got to do it while you've got fuel in you ...”

He stood carefully, pushing off the wall while the dragons milled around him. Twelve stayed in Theodore's grasp, curled tight and balanced on his arm.

“Alright, everyone.”

Six, Eight, Nine, Ten and Eleven looked to him, their eyes riveted, bodies strung taut with attention.

“Attack procedure.”

Immediately, they went to the supply box. Each took a headgear rig in their teeth and, with clumsy but deliberate movements, using forepaws full of non-opposable digits, the five Specimens put on their weapons.

Twelve shifted uneasily. She whined.

“Twelve, you don't need to worry about it,” Theodore told her. “You haven't trained to use the headgear yet.”

She kept squirming. Wanting to imitate her kin, probably. Sensing the importance. With a grimace meant more for himself than for Twelve, Theodore stepped around the other Specimens and took the last headgear rig from the box. It was too big for her and would need considerable adjustment, but he tightened the rig to her smooth head as much as the jointed arms would allow.

“This headgear will ignite your liquid emission for use as a combustible weapon. So you have, uh. Fire breath.” Terms like that still felt strange to speak out loud — like someone around a corner might hear him and raise eyebrows. “I'll teach you to spit later — and the others will show you, too.”

There would be a later: Theodore could never give up that thought, no matter how improbable.

Twelve simply snapped at the metal arm hovering by her mouth. The other Specimens sat listening, ready to obey.

“We leave in ten minutes,” Theodore told them all. “And ... we might not come back. Bring anything we need. Anything we can't leave behind.”

  
The Specimens struggled with the new directive, at first. They picked up empty food trays in their teeth, and the clothing components of their beds; Theodore explained that they could replace those. They picked up the crumpled, claw-torn papers full of Theodore's handwriting, and the archaic portable cassette player that still played its English language learning tape just fine; Theodore found room in his lab coat pockets for those. All of the textbooks had to stay. They were dry subject matter, anyway, good only for gnawing on the hardback covers, and the dragons glanced them over with very little regret.

Eight picked up the only book they all cared about: that old paperback copy of _The Dawning of Shadowkeep, Book 1_. Eight carried the book open, the failing spine bent into an arch, the yellowed pages spread open. Theodore took it from his dragon's mouth and couldn't help looking at the printed words, the ones that pulled at his nostalgic heart.

* * *

  
The dragons circled Lady Almendra, their bowing necks like the archways of her own castle and just as much a home. Her hands brushed over all of their brows, landing finally on the largest-spined brow ridge, that of mighty Skorrnax. Each dragon rumbled its devotion, its love. In all the kingdom, there was no fonder place in that moment than that dragon stable; the piercing wind batted Lady Almenra’s skirts around her but it could not drive away her warmth.

“My dragons, my dear ones. Your sire Rukmior shall not join us in this battle, for he flies in the Farbeyond now. We shall also be without our cavalry today. None but we twelve set out to meet the oncoming enemy, and a smaller army the gods have never looked upon. But by everything holy, we shall prevail.”

Their rumbling crested. The language of dragons was not made of words but passions, and they now voiced their will to fight.

Skorrnax tipped his great head to jostle Lady Almendra, and her lips drew into a smile even as she stumbled. But it was a brief lapse; the fair sorceress stood regal, her chin high. She drew her dagger, the keen blade secreted in the thigh holster she wore, and it flashed silver as she aimed its point at the sky. Magic pooled golden in its engraved runes as Lady Almendra spoke:

“By the Sages, may their words echo through time. By the Scrolls, may they preserve all rhyme. All goodness, all light, find these allies all sure. By might, by right, let we seven endure!”

Light burst from the dagger’s runes, blinding. Magic enveloped all present and in that moment, Almendra knew the totality of truth.

The light was gone as suddenly as it came. Lady Almendra blinked cautiously, and saw glowing spots like candles before her: the eyes of her precious dragons. She laid soft touch on Skorrnax’s face and gazed into his eye: there, behind his ink-slash pupil, burned a golden fire. He bore a gift of strength from the Scrolls of Eternity. His breath flowed shining from his mouth, a magical banner drifting on the air.

“Good,” Lady Almendra said. “Good, my darlings. We must depart while the spell holds.” She holstered her dagger, and resettled her skirts — and in doing that, her own hands snared her attention. They looked like ordinary flesh. Not shining gold from her palms, where her magic germinated. Not marked significant in any way.

“Am I not infused with the spell ...?” Lady Almendra wondered. “Look for sign, Skorrnax.” She met the dragon's gaze, with her purple eyes full of beauty but nothing more. Skorrnax searched the Lady Almendra with his glowing gaze, and he grumbled a sad answer.

“This cannot be,” she murmured. “Am I not a vessel of truth? I have fulfilled all the great Tasks, and I have never harboured doubt ...”

The dragons shifted, unease washing through them. Only Skorrnax voiced it, a lilting growl while he touched his soft nose to Almendra's arm.

“Yes. We must go. Sign or no sign, I shall lead you.” She accepted Skorrnax's offered foreleg and climbed onto his great back. The Lady settled her skirts and touched the dagger's shape beneath them, to be sure her weapon was still there. She felt the swirling presence of magic within her but it was caged now by a crushing doubt.

“Aloft, my dragons,” she called regardless. “Take flight! We head west, to face oblivion!”

* * *

  
In the quiet reality of the lab, Theodore took the paperback book from Eight's mouth. He snapped the book shut and and tipped it so Twelve could see the cover art: a battle scene so familiar that Theodore could sketch it blindfolded if he was any kind of artist, which he wasn't. Punctures dotted the cover: they were tooth marks from dragons, as real as this reality could manage.

“Yeah, we definitely have to bring this,” Theodore said, smiling. “I wish I could read you the other books ... “ It was lucky enough that Theodore had brought Book 1 to reread on the day he was trapped. Starting in the middle of the series would be a travesty.

Eight just stared at him, his reptile eyes inscrutable as ever. And he nudged Theodore's hand until the book was safely jammed into a lab coat pocket.

  
Minutes later, Theodore and the Specimens stood in the echoing foyer, at the lab's front doors. The windows were long since boarded over, and thankfully undamaged. The smell of death leaked in from outside — or maybe from the barricaded South Wing, or the bloodstains soaked brown into the walls.

Wherever it came from, the smell unsettled Theodore more than the dragons: they simply arranged themselves in a V that Theodore hadn't taught them. Six, the eldest and strongest, stood at the head of the formation. Possibly an instinctive behaviour, a holdover from of the Specimens' avian genetics; Theodore decided that that theory was unlikely, since he hadn't used any migratory species of birds. His dragons were simply intelligent. It was a wonderful, terrifying thing to think while he held the hatchling Twelve, bending around her to touch a cigarette lighter to each Specimens' headgear.

“Now, they move slowly,” he explained, “but they're very dangerous. Don't let them get close to you.” He paused, until the struggling flame caught on the ignition arm of Nine's headgear. Flicking the lighter's cheap little wheel and turning to Ten, Theodore added, “The most dangerous part is their highly contagious illness, and you can't catch that because ... Uh, well, it's a human illness. You just... don't need to worry about catching it. But be careful, everyone. Protect yourselves, and each other.”

Six flexed her claws against the stone floor, her reptilian body tight as a bowstring. She was less restless than the others, more focused on the outside world that only one layer of metal separated her from. All the times Theodore talked about the disaster must have sunk deepest into her mind.

This would be a first and final trial. No margin for error. Theodore had put so much work into it, so much hope and the entirety of his resources. It was important not to try saving the world just yet; fight only when attacked; focus on finding food and then another comparatively safe place to rest.

Maybe he couldn’t go through with this, said a queasiness inside him. He couldn’t take his created allies and set them loose in the streets. They could be hurt or killed — or they could contract the illness by some fluke of their patchwork biology. What if they got outnumbered and overwhelmed? What if their headgear pilot lights went out and they couldn't reach Theodore for a relight?

  
What if Theodore saw a face he recognized?

No. It was well proven that recovery from the virus was statistically impossible. The infected didn't have enough neural tissue left to count on their fingers, never mind remember loved ones. Stop asking questions, Theodore tamped into his mind. The people he saw in the street would all be turned. All of them. Vicious and remorseless and … well, evil. His only allies stood beside him now, watching him with slit-pupil eyes.

  
Theodore was a junior genetic engineer with not nearly enough strength or wisdom. In his inner coat pocket, the _The Dawning of Shadowkeep_ weighed.

* * *

Despite agony of that blow, Lady Almendra pushed herself from the ground. Her gown was no less regal for its tears, her skin no less flawless for her own blood upon it. Her eyes burned like purple fire as she matched Dark Baron's gaze, as her magic sputtered in her palms.

The dragons abandoned their own battles — turning their backs on the orc masses, accepting mace blows to their hindquarters with scarcely any notice. They gathered all to Lady Almendra, growling kind worries. Their great bulks forming a living shelter, magic trailing from their mouths like gold pennants. Lady Almendra leaned on Skorrnax's powerful foreleg as she straightened. And over the dragons' growling, she spoke in a winter voice:

“No, Baron. If you seek to seize this kingdom unopposed, you are as foolish as you are wicked. By Luxere’s light, I am Lady Almendra and my dragons burn with the fires of truth. We shall know no fear. We shall bow to none.”

A light began to shine within her. First under her breastbone, glowing like lantern's fire, then then luminescence spread through her entire body. The light caught Almendra's eye and she held her arms before her, watching the light trickle into her clenched hands.

Skorrnax grunted to her.

“Yes,” she breathed, “it must be.” Turning her gaze to the Dark Baron — her eyes now burning golden white — Lady Almendra advanced and her dragons parted like ocean water. Magic rose in her palms, too brilliant for eyes to behold, as she said, “This is the end, Baron. We shall cower no more.”

* * *

  
Theodore was no royal leader, as he crouched to his dragons. It was two minutes past the departure time he had set — but he had to give them final orders. His Specimens broke formation to approach him, to inspect the odd stance Theodore had taken, hunched around little Twelve.

“It's going to be dangerous. I'm sorry. Just remember: know no fear, and bow to none.”

Six pushed her brow ridges against his hand, a blunt encouragement.

“All of you,” he said a little louder, “know no fear. Bow to none. Don't worry about ... k-killing all of them. Just clear a path and I'll look for shelter.”

With a commanding snort, Six returned to her formation position. The others followed. Twelve whined but kept still, her heart a drumbeat within her rib cage.

Theodore's dragons weren’t big enough to lean on, so he put his free hand on the floor and pushed himself up. He pulled the lab's master key ring from one overstuffed pocket and he unlocked the front door, its turning mechanism a physical memory from far-gone days.

With his fear and adrenaline, Theodore pushed too hard — so that the door swung open and smashed against the outside wall, calamitously loud. Cold wind rushed in, putrid with garbage and burning oil and death.

In the street, dozens of infected humans stopped taking their jerking steps. They turned glittering eyes to Theodore. They opened pit-dark mouths and moaned, and they lurched toward Theodore, a live food source.

His dragons passed him by, snarling, advancing to meet the threat. Six spat first, a plume of bio-accelerant with fire rushing after it. She was no perfect, mythological creature but she was strong and she might just save this darkened world.

  
For the first time in years, Theodore stopped being afraid.


End file.
